Mansion

A small staircase makes an inexplicable obstacle

to a hall that hasn’t enough light

 

There are suitcases to be searched

for things to discard before we depart

 

In the kitchen food scraps wait to be thrown out

while all this time the sun has been letting us down

 

And a vehicle’s missing making us wonder

how we’ll get away from this damned mansion

 

I could understand why you were so inconsolable then

Wasn’t frustration the meaning of our job there?

 

But a young man appeared to say I’d frightened him

and led me down to another overgrown path

 

Trials like his aren’t wordy or argumentative

but nothing got done without noises and scratches

 

They tell me this labour of ours lasts only so long

and release promises return to mother

 

 

18.04.23

Machiavelli’s muse

 

Thankful for as much warmth as darknesses afford

they sit between flickering hearth and stone walls

 

as the lady darns

Outside snow flurries sing

 

how you are hostages here

They slowly repair their knowledge

 

of the agonies and strife

joys and communion

 

as events they may stitch together from

voices in the streets or sightings of departing horses

 

Enclosed as a bottled essence

each darkness would be equal

 

were it not for such tales

informed by rags and veils

 

 

 

10/12/20

 

A lesson on College Hill

Learn about what a body can do
what cannot be put to paper or to flame
and when to empty the mind like a bin

When full daylight barely lights the Way
there are too many objects
strewn like tumbledown boxes
hovering liquids
talking books

So light
light thing
talk me through
and lighten my way

When all possibilities
will have been
recollected
comprehended
realised and
half forgotten

then
and only then
may the universe sigh
and once again contract


          3.11.14

The north wind is high

The north wind is high and warm
fetching a sweet scent

with the first signs of
long and heavy rain

A man I spy engaged in
the simple acts of folding laundry

is a folder of illusions
and a rearrangement of feeling

The brute fact of love
echoed through the windows

open to the morning’s warmth
The sparrows squabble on the pavement below


5.1.14

At Sea

Worse things

on the swell and surge

have fallen to

our sorry imaginations

so we could sail over the lines

of everyone’s expectations

Deduct God from the equation

and it’s just you riding and taking on water

the sum and the remainder

of deeds that flowed on down

                             Grant Duncan 16.5.13

Evidence

Strewn before us

was evidence of a kind

you wouldn’t wish to see

lying about

for young historians

of the future to find

Apparently hidden

but willing to be revealed

in those texts

you dog-eared eagerly

as a student

and vandalised

with note after note

in ballpoint pen

telling of your dates

and their times places and names

and memories of what

the sky was like that day

knowledge too cold

to be used

against you now

old man

                 Grant Duncan 24.4.13

A grammar à propos of nothing

About us

This line tells you

what we want you to know

about this line of business

the business of which

is the mind alone

and it tells how things rest

in a jumbled order

like the pronunciation of English

But further it speaks of

resounding words

presented on behalf of

revenants and figments

of disorderly souls

Announcing our distinction from the rest

we wish you to understand

that poems are but dreams

riddled with words

                                         Grant Duncan 19.1.04